THE DRAGON ROUND

Scales of jus­tice

It’s a rare but won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence to come across a truly ex­cel­lent fan­tasy novel. Stephen S Power’s de­but is as­suredly one. Though touted as The Count Of Monte Cristo with dragons, the de­scrip­tion does the story lit­tle jus­tice. This isn’t The Stars My Des­ti­na­tion done over for the swords and horses crowd – which would be cool – but some­thing orig­i­nal.

Jeryon is a sea cap­tain from a hyper-cap­i­tal­ist city state whose crew’s greed prompts mutiny dur­ing a mis­sion un­der­taken partly for mercy, partly for profit. He is ma­rooned, to­gether with the ship’s apothe­cary, on a dis­tant is­land, where the pair dis­cover a rare dragon hatch­ling. Jeryon un­der­takes to train it and his thoughts turn to vengeance.

Though Power’s world is small in scale, the re­la­tions be­tween its states are com­pli­cated by proper eco­nom­ics and his­to­ries, bring­ing a wel­come dash of re­al­ity to this of­ten overly ro­man­tic genre. The book’s writ­ten in a grip­ping present tense, the char­ac­ters are fan­tas­tic, and there’s a bril­liant hero­ine in the shape of the apothe­cary. This is Ge­orge RR Martin-style fan­tasy in all the good ways. Highly rec­om­mended.

Power is also an ed­i­tor for a busi­ness pub­lisher, com­mis­sion­ing books like The 10 Golden Rules Of Lead­er­ship.